1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to the operation management of registration procedures, and more particularly, to operation management of registration procedures using extension registration periods for M2M communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
For a long time, various machines have been provided to make our lives more convenient in every way. Generally, machines, nowadays, are equipped with computing processors and software to accommodate us with more intelligence-based services. With the advancement of wireless communications, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology has been developed to enable communications between remote machines for exchanging information and operating without human interaction. Especially for critical public infrastructures, such as water treatment facilities and bridges, M2M sensors may be employed to monitor the operation statuses of facilities and report measurement results back to control centers via wireless communication networks, such as a Global System for Mobile Communication/General Packet Radio Service (GSM/GPRS), Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), Code Division Multiple Access 2000 1x (CDMA2000 1x) system, 1x High Rate Packet Data (1xHRPD) system, and Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, etc. This allows administrators of the critical public infrastructures to know if certain components have been tampered with. Other applications may be earthquake monitoring, electric metering, gas/oil pipeline monitoring, or coke machine maintenance for reporting operation statuses to a centralized system via wireless communication networks, such that related services with higher efficiency and lower maintenance costs may be provided.
In a typical mobile communication environment using the CDMA2000 1x Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Revision F (or called 1xEV-DO Rev F) technology, a timer-based registration procedure is employed to cause the MS's, including M2M devices and general-purpose MS's (i.e., the MS's not configured for M2M communications), to periodically perform registration procedures for reporting information concerning their positions to the network side according to registration timers. Particularly, the registration timers are set to relatively small values, so that the changes of the MS's positions may be timely reported to the network side. However, the design of the timer-based registration procedure may result in necessary power consumption of the M2M devices, since their mobility is usually pretty low being compared to that of the general-purpose MS's. Thus, it is desirable to provide the M2M devices with a more flexible operation management of the timer-based registration procedure.